Do you ever pick up a record by some long-gone band and find yourself feeling kind of guilty that you didn't do enough to keep the band from breaking up? Sure, maybe the drummer started sleeping with the guitarist's ex, or someone's addicted to heroin and someone else in the band is pissed off about that. That's got nothing to do with you, right? Or does it? Today I watched the new Botch concert movie/CD, 061502, which was shot at their last-ever concert in 2002, and the first thing I thought (after "Man, Botch is so good") was, "We, the fans, didn't do enough to stop this band from breaking up."

Think about it: guys get onstage all the time and say something like, "Even though we are a kick-ass band we are going to stop playing music," and we just take it like a bunch of suckers. Sure, we can rip it up extra-heavy at their last concert, as loaded with sentiment and booze as those things usually are. But we never put our foot down and say, "No way, dudes." Rarely are there enough threatening letters or attempts at blackmail to keep a band going after its members decide to quit. I never see anyone bothering their congressional representatives to pass legislation forcing bands to stay together and keep kicking ass, or organizing protests outside of band members' houses, or anything. It's like we assume that since the band knows how to rock us super-hard, they know what's good for us. Yeah, right.

Right now Botch's MySpace page says this:

There is no reunion in the works. As proud as we are of the band and as much as we're all still friends, there is no plan to do a reunion. zero, zilch, nada. however, we do appreciate everyone's continuing interest in the band. thanks. 

With a little work we could get that changed to something like:

Botch has plans for constant touring that will bring us to your town at least four times a year for the forseeable future. If we don't, there's this guy who says he can ruin our credit and hack our Netflix queues so all we get is five copies at a time of Hollow Man 2. We apologize for any interruption of brutal mathcore that our misguided breakup attempt may have caused.